Dream a Little Dream
by Gedia Kacela
Summary: She dreamed of him now. That was when she knew she was gone past the point of return, when he invaded her subconscious.'


Dream a Little Dream  
  
Disclaimer: The characters? Not mine. Baz's.  
  
Author's Note: This was written for Crystal for a Secret Santa fic exchange. Yes, I'm just now posting it. Your point?  
  
.  
  
Anyway. Merry Christmas, dear!  
  
* * *  
  
She dreamed of him now. That was when she knew she was gone past the point of return, when he invaded her subconscious. They were good dreams, sweet like candy and soft as rosepetal down, tinted green like his eyes.  
  
She might have minded the intrusion by anyone else, but with him it was simply like falling asleep in his arms. She could almost smell him in the dreams, but her sensible side knew it was just the scent of him rubbed off on her robe and skin.  
  
They were happy and lovely, in her dreams. Maybe they were like that in real life, she wasn't sure. She was certain that he was, but somehow the image she used when picturing herself was a bit dimmer, not so beautiful as his dark hair and dimpled smile. In her dreams she was younger and she wore no sequins or feathers. In her dreams she was perfect, and so was he, and they were made for each other in heaven, if in fact that was the destination of her murmured prayers.  
  
She thought of them not as they were but as they might have been.  
  
If they had been children, they would have giggled and told secrets, would have taken naps together under the eye of a watching mother. They would have made flower bracelets and played tag in the streets.  
  
If they had been teenagers, they would have wrestled and flirted and tickled, a maze of arms and legs and heart-stopping love. It would have been that first flush of innocent love gone tainted, when a hand would brush over skin and a heart would skip.  
  
If they had been married, they would have been inseparable, a couple that, as age claimed them, began to look like one another. They would have sat in rocking chairs and greyed and gone rheumatic together, holding one wrinkled old hand in another.  
  
These were the images that flickered across her mind's eye when she slept. These brief portraits of pasts and futures that were not meant to be and would not be. But wouldn't it be wonderful if they were?  
  
But what they were. that was something entirely different. They were sun and moon, fire and ice, winter and spring. life and death. Complete opposites, and drawn together like magnets, he to her like a moth to a flame, desperate to be burned, and she longing to cause him to smolder.  
  
She couldn't imagine life without him any longer, yet kept imagining different lives. For that was what one did. think of all the different possibilities that included him, not the ones where he remained absent.  
  
If they were across the water perhaps, and she were a fine English lady instead of a French whore. They would both be rich, of course, and desperately in love in a storybook kind of way. She would be laden with diamonds and he with her kisses, and they would be called scandalous by the neighbors.  
  
But they were scandalous in their own way, carrying on their illicit affair under the eyes of the Duke, who was so very silly not to notice.  
  
She didn't imagine it ending, what she would say and wear. Instead, she imagined the Duke finding himself suddenly consumed with another and telling her 'sorry, old girl, but I rather fancy Tartan.' And she would cry, of course, and beg him not to leave her. Christian would laugh at her from the sidelines and they would make such a joke of it later. Oh, that silly Duke, who couldn't even see that his prize belonged to another.  
  
He was a dear boy, Christian, and such a very pretty thing. Sometimes it didn't seem real, when they kissed and loved and laughed. It seemed fuzzy, somehow, and not-quite-lucid. She sometimes wondered if she were dreaming this life, this love, and if in reality she was really and truly the plaything of that Duke.  
  
But it felt real enough when she ran her finger over his soft lips and when her stomach twisted inside of her at his glance. He did that to her. twisted her up inside and then sorted her back out nicely. It was a strange feeling. something she didn't quite remember ever feeling before.  
  
Perhaps that was why he got in her dreams so.  
  
And dreaming about him. that had to mean it was real.  
  
Because who ever heard of dreaming of dreams?  
  
END. 


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